pbs_idea_channelfandomcom-20200214-history
Is Nic Cage the Intersection of YOLO and Taoism?
>> MIKE: Here’s an idea: At the intersection of Taoism and YOLO you’ll find Nicolas Cage. theme On this, the fifteen year, two month and nine day anniversary of the theatrical release of Con-Air, we thought it was a good a time as any to celebrate Nicolas Cage. Whether he’s an Italian bakery owner, an alcoholic screenwriter, a professional car thief, a witch hunter or a street tough maverick with nothing to lose... Nicolas Cage sells his rolls with arresting conviction. >> NIC: How in the name of Zeus’s butthole... did you get out of your cell? >> MIKE: Which must be tough as both Ben Sanderson and the guy from Drive Angry. laughter Most superstar celebrity actors try to appear in exclusively good movies which advance their careers but Nic seems to be operating on a different criteria. And what is this criteria? This is the mystery of Nic Cage. In a superficial kind of way, much of what Nic does could actually fly under the banner of YOLO. >> NIC: Not cool! >> MIKE: YOLO is an acronym that stands for You Only Live Once and stresses that one’s time on Earth is but a fleeting occurrence. And so why not take advantage of your luck by doing something irresponsible or possibly dangerous. You can apply YOLO to many things, like eating a box of Oreos, going bungee jumping or, like Nic does, choosing movie rolls. He chooses rolls which allow him to just go for it, an approach he has called a modern art style of performance. Or acting outside the box. Or even “nouveau shamanic.” Nic also approaches his real life with the same Devil-may-care, YOLO attitude that he does his rolls. Cage once bought a twenty-five thousand dollar octopus. YOLO. He named his son Kal-El after Superman. YOLO. He outbid Leonardo diCaprio on a quarter of a million dollar dinosaur skull. Yi-yi-yi-YOLO. You get the idea. Also, I really want to stop shouting YOLO... Incidentally, none of this seems flukey. Good movies, bad movies, solid decisions, questionable life choices, they all seem to jive. I wonder, is there something deeper than YOLO going on here? laughter I mean, in practice YOLO is just something that teenagers shout before they throw sandwiches. What Nic does seems to be something other than YOLO’s frivolous, surface level “Carpe Diem.” Something like a guiding principle or a Tao of Nic Cage. And if there were a Tao of Nic Cage, it would probably resemble that of Zhuang Tzu pretty closely. Zhuang Tzu’s not your garden variety fourth century BCE Chinese philosopher. I mean, yeah he communed with nature, but he also might have been the first anarchist and had conversations with skulls about how death might not actually be that bad. Translator Martin Palmer describes him as being fed by Shamanism. He uses humor, shock tactics, silly names, the weirdest characters and totally unbelievable scenarios to make us look again at what we hold true. In his self titled philosophically work, Master Zhuang argues that the world contains infinite information and experience. But as humans we only have a finite amount time to learn or act, which makes planning your life or weighing your options an exercise in futility. Master Zhuang wrote that the perfect man is pure in spirit. Such a person rides the clouds and mounts upon the sun and moon and wanders across and beyond the four seas, neither death nor life concern him, nor is he interesting in what is good or bad. Sound familiar? >> NIC: I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! I’m a vampire! >> MIKE: Zhuang Tzu’s philosophy is definitely the Tao of YOLO and maybe the Tao of Nic Cage. For whom the absurdity and excitement of experience trumps all other methods of choosing rolls. Or home furnishings... But all this might warrant some comparisons. I mean, Nic Cage isn’t the only weird actor. Really what about Tom Cruise or Britney Spears or Carrot Top? We don’t celebrate their weird badness in the way we do Cage’s, we point and laugh and cringe. Maybe the explanation is that Nic Cage seems genuine in everything he does. Whereas Britney’s head shaving episode really felt like a weird, sad cry for attention. And everything Tom Cruise does feels like it’s calculated and planned. People might love Nicolas Cage for the same reason they love Lady GaGa, Ryan Gosling or Christopher Walken. They seem to have a discipline or a path, something that’s identifiable but ineffable. Which makes a lot of sense because all of the great masters said the Tao which can be talked about is not the Tao. So we’ll just leave it at that. >> NIC: Not the bees! Ahhhhh!! Ah! AHHH! >> MIKE: What do you guys think? What is it that makes a really well loved celebrity? Let us know in the comments and if you’re not mad at me for saying YOLO a million time this episode, please subscribe. timey car horn How many geniuses at the olympics? Let’s see what you guys had to say: StraySora points out the western centric idea of genius that we sort of accidentally reaffirmed and makes a really good point about all of the very smart people that were around during, uh, the European Dark Ages in the Middle East. Really incredibly interesting. yoyoyoy500 wants to know whether or not we don’t choose some comments because the username is hard to say. Actually, no. Um, names will probably never stop us. Plus we really like a challenge, yoyoyoy500. 182crazyking thinks that we actually need a word in addition to genius to describe people who are able to accomplish impressive physical tasks, which, yeah like Herculean is maybe kind of close, but we’re always for neologism. randalthor12345 wonders whether or not music is a sport. Actually, uh, in the early modern olympics, uh, until about 1950 there actually were art competitions in the olympics so short answer: yes. Andrey Gurevich wonders whether or not the olympics will ever replace war. Which one can only hope. I mean, that was part of the original mission, part of the original goal of the olympics but part of me really feels like it’s never gunna replace generals and the military complex. Artistfyre really knocks it out of the park with a great comment about always wanting to surpass the achievements of our predecessors, so we’ll just pause here for a second so you can read it. There were a lot of comments about the morality of funding sports as opposed to other kinds of achievement and we don’t necessarily think that they’re mutually exclusive. That said, it would be great to see more huge, worldwide competitions in the style of the olympics for the arts and engineering and science. Uh, building on that point, BloodEyePact points out that there actually is a robotics Super Bowl for geniuses which sounds like it is impossibly fun. theme Category:English Category:Complete